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Wednesday, May 16, 2012

New in New York: Sour Tastes Sweet at Treat Petite

By Mitch Broder

You walk along the boardwalk, then you step up to the
counter, then you order some milk with bacteria and yeast.

That’s how you know it’s summer.

At least that’s one way, in the West Village, where you can
approximate that experience at a new café by the enigmatic name of Treat
Petite. Your treat is frozen kefir, which is just like frozen yogurt except
that you can find frozen yogurt in a lot more places than you can find frozen
kefir.

And actually, it’s not just like frozen yogurt, which is why Rovshan Danilov and Arthur Simonyan saw their entrepreneurial future in it. Kefir is tangy,
which is to say piquant, which is to say sour, but in a good way. Freeze it and
turn it into key lime pie, and you can startle even Mister Softee.

Kefir is popular in places like Arthur and Rovshan’s homelands of, respectively, Russia and Azerbaijan. It is indeed made by fermenting
milk with bacteria and yeast, in kefir grains. It’s supposed to be
good for digestion. And like most things, it’s made more acceptable to the
American palate by the addition of fruity flavors, chocolatey bits, and mini
marshmallows.

Arthur began handing me samples before I even stepped up to
the counter, which you do on a floor that is indeed reminiscent of a boardwalk.
He first gave me the Classic, which showcased the tanginess, or the piquancy, or the sourness, of kefir. It made me want more,
which was something I didn’t need to worry about.

He gave me the pomegranate, which blended kefir tang with pomegranate tang. He gave me the caramelized pineapple and the
strawberry-banana, which tasted like pineapples and strawberry-bananas. Then he
gave me the Key Lime Pie — kefir with key-lime custard and graham-cracker dust
— which proved that there’s a sound reason for this place to exist.

The Key Lime Pie is one of the Kefir Concoctions, which are
combinations that further reveal the star ingredient’s versatility. It is an
explosion of flavors, and exploding flavors are getting hard to come by. It
induces you not only to keep spooning it but also to want to spoon the others.

The others include the PB&J, made of peanut-butter kefir
and grape jelly, the Walnuts & Syrup, made of kefir and walnuts in maple
syrup, and the Balsamic Strawbs & Cream, made of kefir, balsamic strawbs,
and whipped cream. They’re “strawbs” because the menu blackboard’s too small.

I didn’t try any toppings besides the Key Lime graham dust,
but there are a couple of dozen to add to your flavor explosion. Along with the
conventional nuts, Gummy Bears, and Oreo crumbs, there are mango, kiwi,
lychee, Cap’n Crunch, halvah, and Japanese rice cake.

The café has other delicacies, including crepes and waffles, but it is resolutely built on frozen kefir. That’s why the
owners are wisely at work perfecting a chocolate frozen kefir. It’s tricky to balance chocolatey and tangy, Arthur explained: “We’re trying to find
the best middle between those two.”

Miss Piper Miller with the S'mores Crepe.

Try a little something at Treat Petite, 61 Grove Street, at
Seventh Avenue South, in New York City.

New York Chronicles

About Me

For twenty years, I wrote about New York for the nation's largest newspaper chain. Now I write about New York for the nation's largest Internet. I do this because I love to explore the city and to share what I've found, except when I'm greedy about it and decide to keep it to myself.
"Vintage," of course, means old, but it also means timeless. It's my defense for covering new things that evoke old New York spirit. But I mostly cover the best places that take you back in time, whether you are revisiting a time or just now discovering it.
On the street I still feel like a tourist, and I tend to look like one, too. These are perhaps my greatest qualifications. Among my others are some of the top prizes in New York City journalism, which nobody really cares about because they're not a Pulitzer.